US organized a flight out of Beirut as Americans seek to leave Lebanon, says State Dept/node/2573685/middle-east
US organized a flight out of Beirut as Americans seek to leave Lebanon, says State Dept
The US organized a flight from Beirut to Istanbul on Wednesday to allow Americans to leave Lebanon amid the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. (X/@MEAAIRLIBAN)
US organized a flight out of Beirut as Americans seek to leave Lebanon, says State Dept
The flight on Wednesday had a capacity of about 300 and carried around 100 Americans
Updated 02 October 2024
Reuters
WASHINGTON: The United States organized a flight from Beirut to Istanbul on Wednesday to allow Americans to leave Lebanon amid the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Miller told a press briefing that around 7,000 US citizens in Lebanon had registered with the US government to receive information about leaving the country, although not all of those are looking for assistance to leave.
The flight on Wednesday had a capacity of about 300 and carried around 100 Americans and their family members, Miller said, adding Washington had been working with airlines since Saturday to make seats available to Americans on commercial flights.
Key priority is to deliver huge surge of aid into Gaza: UN’s relief chief
Delivering aid had become ‘almost impossible in the last few weeks,’ Fletcher says
Updated 37 sec ago
Zaynab Khojji
DAVOS: Delivering a huge surge of aid into Gaza is a key priority for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the agency’s head said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Tom Fletcher said that “millions are in need” in the war-torn territory and that the aid would partly support the ceasefire process.
Fletcher said: “The key priority for us on the humanitarian side now is to get a huge surge of aid into Gaza, partly to support the ceasefire process because it is dependent on this step by step, very complex approach, but more importantly because millions are in need.
“(Some) 600 trucks (entered) on Sunday, including 300 up to the north which needs it so badly, 900 on Monday and more today.”
A boy chases one of the trucks carrying UNRWA aid coming in from the Kerem Shalom border crossing and arriving in the southern Gaza Strip on January 21, 2025. (AFP)
He described how delivering aid had become “almost impossible in the last few weeks,” with convoys being looted and community organizers assisting the OCHA “taken out by Israeli drones.”
Fletcher said: “We lost 79 out of 80 trucks in one convoy. And then the community organizers who went in with us were then taken out by Israeli drones. So it was becoming almost impossible to deliver a fraction of what we needed to do. Now the ceasefire opens up this window and we’ve got to really show that we can deliver at that massive scale.”
However, he warned that the money would soon run out and that the UN agency needs funding and protection to deliver aid.
Fletcher said: “We’ll need the funding and the protection, which means member states have to start saying ‘Stop shooting at UN convoys.’
“Last year was the deadliest year to be a humanitarian on record and that was mainly because of Gaza.
“We can’t deliver all these convoys alone. So we need commercial traffic getting into Gaza. And we need innovation as well. You know, in the last 14 months Gaza has been a laboratory of war and testing new weapons. We now need it to be a laboratory of humanitarian support. You know, can we use as much ingenuity and innovation in saving lives as in killing people? And that’s a real test.”
The head of the OCHA said that the UN agency was launching a big cash aid initiative on Tuesday, adding: “We’re trying to get direct cash support to a million Palestinian families, mostly headed by women, so that they get to make the choices about where they spend the money.”
The Chairman of the Bank of Palestine Hashim Shawa said that the institution had been working with all development partners in mobilizing cash assistance programs for decades.
He said: “We’ve been the first to innovate in the digital space. We’ve bought in international investors to help the bank not only remain resilient, but grow.
“We’ve grown 100 branches all over the West Bank and Gaza. We’re now in the UAE, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. We got a license in Cairo. We’re expanding in Cairo, obviously. The day after this war Egypt is going to play a strategic role in the development of Gaza.
The Chairman of the Bank of Palestine Hashim Shawa. (WEF)
“So we’ve left no stone unturned in terms of providing the international aid organizations (with) a trusted, well-vetted, high tech, bullet-proof platform, Bank of Palestine, to facilitate all this aid. Half a million beneficiaries a year receive much-needed cash assistance and other forms of aid through their phones, digitally.”
Sara Pantuliano, the chief executive of ODI Global, a global affairs think tank, said that recovery and reconstruction in Gaza was not just a matter of money and infrastructure, but death and destruction.
She said that colleagues and friends working in Gaza describe it as having a “sort of moon landscape.”
Palestinians search for their belongings under the rubble of destroyed homes a day after a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP)
She said: “The UNDP (UN Development Programme) estimates that there are 50 million tonnes of rubble to be removed. And this rubble is mixed with human remains and unexploded ordnance, which means it’s incredibly difficult to deal with it.
“There is an estimate if you had 100 trucks working day in, day out, to try and remove this rubble, making sure that you dispose and bury the bodies that are mixed with the rubble, and carefully so that you don’t detonate more of this unexploded ordnance, it would take 15 years to dispose of the rubble that’s been created to date.”
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says death toll at 47,107
Updated 1 min 54 sec ago
The health ministry is finding more dead, as the truce has allowed people to comb the ruins The bodies of 72 people “arrived at hospitals... over the past 24 hours,” the ministry said
GAZA STRIP: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday that 47,107 people had been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, with the toll continuing to rise in spite of a ceasefire as new bodies were found under the rubble. The ceasefire has held since going into effect on Sunday, bringing a halt to more than 15 months of fighting in the Palestinian territory. But the health ministry is finding more dead, as the truce has allowed people to comb the ruins. Other people have died from wounds received before the fighting stopped, with the territory’s health system devastated by the war. The bodies of 72 people “arrived at hospitals... over the past 24 hours,” the ministry said in a statement. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulances and civil protection teams are unable to reach them,” it added. The ministry said the number of wounded had reached 111,147 since the start of the war on October 7, 2023. The ministry called on the families of people killed or missing in the war to register online to aid in the identification of bodies and to compile a more accurate death toll. Israel has regularly questioned the credibility of the ministry’s figures, although the United Nations deems them reliable. A study in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published in early January estimated that the number of deaths during the first month of the war was around 40 percent higher than the official ministry figure.
France issues new arrest warrant for Syria’s Assad: source
Assad is held responsible in the warrant issued on Monday as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” for a bombing Daraa in 2017
The French judiciary considers that Assad ordered and provided the means for this attack
Updated 6 min 22 sec ago
AFP
PARIS: Two French investigating magistrates have issued an arrest warrant against ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad for suspected complicity in war crimes, the second such move by France’s judicial authorities, a source said on Tuesday.
Assad, who was ousted late last year in a lightning offensive by Islamist forces, is held responsible in the warrant issued on Monday as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” for a bombing in the Syrian city of Daraa in 2017 that killed a civilian, a source close to the case, asking not to be named, told AFP.
This mandate was issued as part of an investigation into the case of Salah Abou Nabout, a 59-year-old Franco-Syrian national and former French teacher, who was killed on June 7, 2017 following the bombing of his home by Syrian army helicopters.
The French judiciary considers that Assad ordered and provided the means for this attack, according to the source.
Six senior Syrian army officials are already the target of French arrest warrants over the case in an investigation that began in 2018.
“This case represents the culmination of a long fight for justice, in which I and my family believed from the start,” said Omar Abou Nabout, the victim’s son, in a statement.
He expressed hope that “a trial will take place and that the perpetrators will be arrested and judged, wherever they are.”
French authorities in November 2023 issued a first arrest warrant against Assad over chemical attacks in 2013 where more than a thousand people, according to American intelligence, were killed by sarin gas.
While considering Assad’s participation in these attacks “likely,” public prosecutors last year issued an appeal against the warrant on the grounds that Assad should have immunity as a head of state.
However, his ouster has now changed his status and potential immunity. Assad and his family fled to Russia after his fall, according to Russian authorities.
Iraq parliament adopts revised bill after outcry over underage marriage
The amendment to the 1959 Personal Status Law allows people to choose between religious or civil regulations for family matters
An earlier version of the amendments faced a backlash from feminists and civil society groups
Updated 15 min 45 sec ago
AFP
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament passed into law on Tuesday a revised bill that had sparked outrage over fears it rolled back women’s rights and permitted underage marriage.
The parliament said on its website that it had adopted “the proposal to amend the Personal Status Law,” as well as “the second amendment of the general amnesty law.”
The amendment to the 1959 Personal Status Law allows people to choose between religious or civil regulations for family matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce and child custody.
An earlier version of the amendments faced a backlash from feminists and civil society groups over fears it would lower the minimum age for Muslim girls to marry to as young as nine years old.
But a revised version reinstated clauses of the old law that set the age of marriage at 18 — or 15 with the consent of legal guardians and a judge, MP Mohamed Anouz told AFP.
Under the new amendment, couples can opt for Shiite Muslim or Sunni Muslim rules, and clerics and lawyers will have four months to establish community-specific regulations.
In October, Amnesty International warned the amendments could strip women and girls of protections regarding divorce and inheritance.
The parliament also passed a general amnesty law that had sparked disagreements between political blocs. The law grants retrials to those convicted of a number of crimes.
The Taqadom party, the most influential Sunni bloc, welcomed the adoption of the amnesty law.
Iraq’s Sunni community has been the main proponent of revisiting the law, pushing for it to include a full review of all convictions on terror charges.
The law excludes convictions for “terrorist crimes” that resulted in the death of a person or “permanent disability,” or that involved fighting the Iraqi security forces or “sabotage of institutions,” according to Anouz.
But it does allow the judiciary to reopen investigations and start new trials for those who say they confessed “under torture” or were convicted based on “information provided by a secret informer,” Anouz explained.
In recent years, Iraqi courts have ordered hundreds of executions in terror cases, proceedings that rights groups say often lack due process or in which confessions suspected to have been extracted through torture are admissible.
In a country plagued by endemic corruption, those accused of embezzling public funds can also benefit from the amnesty law if they repay the stolen money, Anouz said.
A previous 2016 amnesty reportedly covered 150,000 people.
The new amnesty law excludes rape, incest and human trafficking.
The laws passed Tuesday, each endorsed by the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities, were adopted in one package, with political parties agreeing to avoid any blockage.
But several lawmakers denounced irregularities in the voting process, with some threatening to go to court to have Tuesday’s session invalidated.
MP Nour Nafe claimed the parliament passed the personal status law and the general amnesty “without a vote.”
The MPs “did not raise their hands,” she said on X, adding that some lawmakers had left the room in response to the “farce.”
Israel’s failure to commit to full withdrawal contradicts promises made to Lebanon, Aoun says
Aoun told Spanish Def Min Margarita Robles that Israel’s failure to commit to the withdrawal contradicts the promises made to Lebanon during the negotiations preceding the agreement
President praised the role of the Spanish battalion operating within the UNIFIL in southern Lebanon and the exceptional efforts of UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Aroldo Lazaro
Updated 21 January 2025
NAJIA HOUSSARI
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday reaffirmed Lebanon’s adherence to “the completion of Israel’s withdrawal from the remaining occupied territories in the south within the 60-day deadline stipulated in the agreement reached on Nov. 27, 2024, which expires in four days.”
Aoun told Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles, during their meeting at the Presidential Palace, that “Israel’s failure to commit to the withdrawal contradicts the promises made to Lebanon during the negotiations preceding the agreement.”
This, he said, “perpetuates tension in the border villages, prevents establishing stability, delays the return of residents to their towns, and obstructs the reconstruction of what the Israeli enemy destroyed during its aggression against Lebanon.”
Aoun said he had sent several messages to force Israel to withdraw, receiving support from the international community, “which is expected to exert pressure in this regard.”
The president praised the role of “the Spanish battalion operating within the UNIFIL in southern Lebanon and the exceptional efforts of UNIFIL commander Maj. Gen. Aroldo Lazaro, as well as the complete coordination with army units deployed in the international operations area.”
The Spanish minister underlined her country’s “support for the role Aoun is playing in Lebanon’s recovery after the difficult circumstances it has faced.”
She said: “Spain will stand by Lebanon and its people and will continue its work within the international forces,” emphasizing “the necessity of achieving the Israeli withdrawal on time to preserve stability in the south and the progress made so far.”
Robles also highlighted “Spain's collaboration with the EU to assist Lebanon in all fields.”
Meanwhile, Aoun emphasized the importance of rejecting sectarianism.
During a meeting with Sheikh Ali Qaddour, head of the Alawite Islamic Council, who came to congratulate the president, Aoun said: “Lebanon comprises various sects, and this constitutes its wealth. Each sect has its own elites, and it is essential for all groups to have representation in the government, parliament, and public administrations, similar to the representation found within the army.”
Aoun said he hoped to “form a government as soon as possible so that we can create political, economic and security stability so that citizens can live in dignity and not just in luxury.”
Aoun said: “We are at a crossroads; we can either take advantage of the current situation and rise above the trivialities of sectarian, confessional, and political matters, or we may find ourselves in a different place where the fault lies not with others, but with us for failing to fulfill our responsibilities.”
Nawaf Salam, the designated prime minister, is expected to visit Aoun to present the draft list of proposed names for the government.
Salam insists the Cabinet should consist of non-partisan and non-parliamentary figures, comprising 24 ministers.
Aoun is seeking the formation of the government before the deadline for the Israeli withdrawal, so that the new government can address the expected challenges.
Israeli forces carried out more demolition operations in the border area and bulldozed roads linking the inner neighborhoods in the town of Maroun Al-Ras.
Israeli media reported that preparations are ongoing along the border with Lebanon for the establishment of new positions for the Israeli army.
Construction teams are working to set up these new sites, which will primarily be situated between the settlements and the border fence.
